Emilie Mayer and Rossini?

[Double-A]

I stumbled on this curiosum on youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiBjbYWSW3o

It is a performance of the overture in D by Mayer (University of Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Magdalena Pawlisz).  Quite fine for a university orchestra except for the often sticky tempi.

But the Rossini imitations that appear in the piece are rather surprising to me.  I would have expected Mayer to share the contempt that German musical elites generally had for Italian music and Italian opera.

[Alan Howe]

The situation is rather more complex. Take Schubert, for example: he wrote an overture 'In the Italian Style', D590. There also 'Rossini-isms' in Lachner's symphonic finales.

[eschiss1]

A fair number of other Schubert works sound Rossini-influenced in places, and I'm trying to remember if Beethoven and Rossini, who met, got along; but both composers were Austrian, and I guess may not be included among the German musical elites - actually I'm not quite sure what Double-A means, and just have to ask?...

[eschiss1]

Looking over Mayer's teachers though in hopes of maybe shedding light on this question, I see the presence of Wilhelm Wieprecht, which raises another; the reformer of military music taught a composer whose third symphony was (as we've pointed out when it's been recorded twice recently- symphony 3 in C), notably, a "military" one...

[Double-A]

I know the Schubert overture of course--and also symphony 6, both of which I have played in the orchestra.  I could quote Wagner ("welscher Schund und welscher Tand") but that would be unfair since Mayer was clearly not in his camp.

But Spohr kept coming back the the inferiority of Italian composers and Rossini in particular in his memoir.  Also E.T.A. Hoffmann in his tale of "Kater Murr" insinuates that German music is superior to other styles.

I was mostly just surprised to find Rossini-isms in, of all composer's, Mayer's music; I had her down as serious and intense, i.e. very German.  It appears that she also had a sense of fun.

[Alan Howe]

The German sense of superiority mentioned is now merely a historical curiosity. It means nothing. Wagnerites will disagree, but I'll take Verdi any day...